Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) is a type of virtual computing platform that converges compute, networking, virtualization, and storage into a single software-defined architecture. For instance, a single software application can interact with each of component of hardware and software as well as an underlying operating system. Hyper-converged infrastructures provide enterprises and other organizations with modular and expandable compute, storage, and network resources as well as system backup and recovery. In a hyper-converged infrastructure, compute, storage, and network resources are brought together using preconfigured and integrated hardware.
Since resources in a hyper-converged infrastructure system are pre-configured and highly integrated, ensuring network bandwidth for a particular task remains problematic, even when certain components have sufficient network capability. For example, a switch in, the hyper-converged infrastructure can become overburdened and incapable of handling bandwidth requirements for all hardware connected to the switch. When the networks become loaded, switches can drop data packets. This can affect overall performance of a data center.